(Host) Senator Patrick Leahy says he hopes protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States will play a prominent role in the 2012 elections.
The protests have spread around the country and the world and one of their goals is to highlight the growing economic disparity between the top 1% of the population and the remaining 99% of all workers.
Leahy says the protesters are raising important issues that need to be considered:
(Leahy) "I can well understand why they are doing this when you have such an enormous, enormous gap between the very wealthy, the biggest gap in my lifetime between the wealthy and those that are not. I worry what this does to our society."
(Host) Leahy notes that the Tea Party movement arose from the same kind of grass roots protests and he hopes that supporters of the Occupy Wall Street will follow the lead of the Tea Party and get involved in local, state and national elections:
(Leahy) "Those who are protesting now if it really is going to have an effect they’re going to have to organize and elect the people who will do the things they’re taking about and that’s the hard part."
(Host) Protests took place this weekend in a number of Vermont towns, and an encampment began in Burlington.